Some Arboretum entrances are 'a mess.' Why residents are pining for a fix

One of Boston’s great green spaces, the Arnold Arboretum invites the public to enjoy its hundreds of acres of blooming flowers, shady trees and winding paths for free.

But for people in neighborhoods bordering the park, it can be hard to find a way into the Arboretum because of run-down, closed-up or hard-to-find entryways. The Arboretum is trying to fix that, partnering with the city, the MBTA and community groups to renovate a passageway off Washington Street in Roslindale.

The entrance — a pedestrian tunnel under commuter rail tracks at the end of Arboretum Road — had fallen into disrepair: littered with garbage, weeds and drug paraphernalia.

"It was a mess," said Ned Friedman, director of the Arnold Arboretum and a biology professor at Harvard University. "It wouldn't be a place that a family would necessarily feel comfortable coming to the Arnold Arboretum through."

To change that, workers are now rehabbing the grimy underpass and constructing a new walkway. The city is overseeing the work and paying for the bulk of it, since Boston owns the land around the tunnel, while the MBTA owns the tunnel itself. (The City of Boston also owns the Arboretum — Harvard University operates the Arboretum under a 1,000-year lease, and Arboretum staff will maintain this entrance after it opens this summer.)

Neighbors like Ben Bruno look forward to that day. He has two little kids who like to visit the Arboretum, but that always meant braving the scary tunnel.

"I used to carry them and their bikes and go through the mud and the trash and, and get through that way," Bruno said. "Now they'll be able to bike down the sidewalk on this amazing path. You know, it's going to be very relaxing and a wonderful way for people to get here."

Bruno is a member of WalkUp Roslindale, a neighborhood organization that helped spearhead the effort to clean up the entrance.

WalkUp Roslindale members Steven Gag and Greg Tobin, who also live nearby, said the group's efforts were partly motivated by social justice concerns. The Arboretum Street entrance borders environmental justice neighborhoods, which have historically less access to green space. They said some neighbors have never even heard of the Arboretum.

"They don't even know it exists, because there's no easy way for them to get here," Gag said. "So this could open this up to literally thousands of people, that don't have an easy access to it now."

Access to green space is becoming more critical as climate change brings more frequent, longer and more intense heat waves to the city. The effects of rising temperatures are felt more acutely in "urban heat islands" with more asphalt and fewer trees. At the rehabbed entrance, the temperature is noticeably cooler on the Arboretum side of the tunnel.

"We are surrounded by canopy that is keeping this area cooler than these treeless spaces with asphalt," said Friedman. "So, getting onto this property here is just a really good thing on a hot day."

The new entrance is part a bigger plan to connect nearby neighborhoods to the Arboretum with better entrances, bike paths, sidewalks and community outreach. The next step is rehabbing the Poplar Gate entrance; work on that begins in August and is slated to be completed next spring.